Discography

5 STAR REVIEW: Clytemnestra [is] a powerful piece . . . Time and again on this album, usefully filled out with Mahler and Berg, predecessors audibly close to Samuel's heart, soloist and composer make Clytemnestra's wrenching drama something tangible. When Hughes sings of fire, you feel the heat. At the word, 'weeping', your heart breaks. Geoff Brown, The Times, 31 January, 2020

[Clytemnestra is] a powerful and persuasive monodrama . . . whose seven movements take us from the first news of Agmemnon's return . . . to the 'Epilogue: Dirge', whose sudden quiet reflectiveness is surprisingly moving. Samuel's musical language is accessible and powerful, with an appropriately craggy granitic strength to it. . . It's for Samuel's punchy work that this fine album [the BIS CD] is primarily worth seeking out.

Hugo Shirley, Gramophone, January, 2020

In Clytemnestra(BIS), soprano Ruby Hughes, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and conductor Jac van Steen give new life to Samuel’s powerful, seven-movement work for soprano and orchestra. . . It explores – with rare insight, passionately expressed by Hughes – the motives that led Clytemnestra to murder her husband, Agamemnon.

Fiona Maddox, The Guardian, 19 January 2020 Rhian Samuel's Clytemnestra could yet take its place alongside other British excursions into Classical Greek myth such as Tippett's King Priam and especially Britten's Phaedra, that other great female confessional monologue. Roy Westbrook, MusicWeb International, February, 2020

With excellent performances and sound this well produced disc should do much to bring Samuel’s finely crafted music deservedly to the attention of a wider audience. Guy Rickards, Gramophone, December, 2007

Yr Alarch for SATB choir (Cardiff University Contemporary Music Group, conductor Robert Fokkens)

Brief as they are, their expressive range is wide, with the first ending in a whisper and the last building to a huge climax, powerfully caught by the artists here. Edward Greenfield, Gramophone, April, 2014